Southeast Arkansas Regional Library is a system of 14 branches serving a population of 68,000 residents over a large rural area, where more than 28 percent lives beneath the poverty level. SARL's libraries share a $48,000 collection budget, of which just 1 percent is devoted to juvenile items. Forty-one percent of the library system's books for youth were published in 1980 or before; 15 percent were published after 2000.